by Jonathan Coe
‘That sounds highly unprincipled,’ said Paul, ‘and deeply unsystematic.’
‘You do me an injustice,’ said Lawrence. ‘I have my beliefs, as coherent as your own, perhaps more so. And I live by them.’
‘Very well. Do me the honour of explaining them.’
‘Well now: take the situation we are placed in at the moment. Two strangers find themselves talking together in a sitting room in Sheffield. Have political circumstances brought it about? Is it the product of ideology? Only to a certain extent. Is religion of any use to us here? Is it part of a huge providential scheme devised by a benevolent God? I would like to see it proved. No, it seems to me that everything we do is merely determined by chance; or, as I prefer to call it, luck. Our so-called choices, these supposedly responsible decisions – ultimately they have to be made in the context of factors over which we have not the slightest control. Realize this, you see, and you are on the way to understanding life. The man who realizes this is the truly lucky man.’
‘That’s not a very original philosophy,’ said Paul, with a dismissive gesture.
‘I never said that it was. And even so, very few people have the courage to take it seriously. It’s far too frightening for them.’
‘And besides, it hardly helps to explain why you are here, does it?’
‘But that’s precisely the point. There are no explanations beyond those which consist of chains of cause and effect much too large and complicated ever to be traced. I shall probably never know how I came to be here. All I know is that I meant to visit my sister in Derby, but I fell asleep on the train.’
‘So there’s your explanation: you were tired, and you fell asleep. What could be more simple?’
‘But I wasn’t tired. I wasn’t tired at all.’ Lawrence frowned. ‘Perhaps I should phone to let her know where I am. Strange, isn’t it, to think that not a living soul, besides you, knows that I am here this morning?’
Paul laughed. ‘Ah, but you’re wrong again. Just before you came down, I phoned the people in your house, and told them.’
‘You phoned Coventry?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now there we have a classic illustration of my argument. Because, you see, if I had not once had a lover who worked in a newsagent’s, you would not have been able to do that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I take it that you got the phone number from the front page of my diary? But I would never have had a diary at all, if this lover did not use to get them free from the shop every January.’
‘I see.’
‘And, as chance would have it, your plan will have backfired for precisely the same reason. Because if that diary did not have a sentimental value, I would have thrown it away long ago, since it is now a year out of date, and besides, I don’t live at that address any more.’ He paused for effect, achieved none, and continued: ‘So presumably your call met with complete incomprehension.’
‘No, not at all. I spoke to a party by the name of Amanda. She knew all about you. She even knew why you had left Coventry.’
Lawrence sat up, truly surprised.
‘Amanda? Amanda who?’
‘I didn’t ask. I thought you’d know. She seemed to be a great friend of yours.’
Now Lawrence was extremely confused by this information, because to the best of his knowledge he had no friend called Amanda, let alone one who lived at his old address. However, I see no reason why you should share in his ignorance.
It is a curious fact that two people can coexist in proximity, perhaps occupying the same work or living environment, and yet have completely different images of one another. For instance, Lawrence would undoubtedly have recognized Amanda if he had seen her. Her face would have been familiar, but only as belonging to one of those many figures whom he did not even know well enough to nod to or smile at in casual greeting. Whereas he was, to her, a constant preoccupation, an obsession, the centrepiece of her mental landscape. The word is ‘crush’, I am told. Her crush on Lawrence began the minute she clapped eyes on him, only a few weeks after they had both started at the university; but it remained, so far, unsatisfied, owing to a series of misfortunes. She had tried for approximately eight months to fake a chance encounter with Lawrence by hanging around the coffee bar of the Engineering building. This was a complete waste of time because Lawrence had no connection with the Engineering department at all, being a student of social sciences. The fact was that Amanda had once seen him taking a book out of the Engineering section of the library, and, foolishly, had thereby concluded that he was an engineer. Actually he had been taking the book out for a friend, who was ill in bed with a chill, the consequence of having left his raincoat on a bus the previous evening, obliging him to walk home in the rain. Amanda had, in other words, made the mistake of organizing her life around a perfectly reasonable bit of observation and deduction, and had ended up spending an enormous amount of time sitting on her own in unfriendly surroundings waiting for Lawrence to turn up, when in all probability he was sitting alone in a different coffee bar, some two hundred yards away, completely oblivious of her existence.
Eventually, too, another dirty trick was played on her. She made it her business to find out Lawrence’s address and one day saw a notice on the accommodation board saying that a room was vacant in his house. She had taken the room and moved most of her possessions in before she took the precaution of enquiring, of one of her fellow tenants, which of the rooms was occupied by Lawrence; and she was duly informed that Lawrence had moved out, two weeks earlier, to a flat on campus (which was where Amanda had been living), and that it was, in fact, his old room that she was moving into. Which was why, when Paul phoned the number he had found in Lawrence’s diary, it was Amanda who answered; although her familiarity with his recent movements must, for the time being, await further explanation.
‘I am puzzled,’ Lawrence admitted, ‘by what you have just told me. The name Amanda doesn’t ring any bells.’
‘I think I’ve got the name right,’ said Paul. ‘As I said, she seemed to know you very well. In fact she sounded extremely concerned about you. She seemed to think you were in some kind of trouble.’
‘Trouble?’
‘The police were mentioned.’ He noticed that Lawrence looked very alarmed at the mention of this word, and asked, ‘You’re not… you know, on the run or anything, are you?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Lawrence, shiftily; and then, with more assurance: ‘No, not at all. I was going to get away from Coventry for a few days anyway. As I said, I wanted to visit my sister in Derby. It’s just that, as it turns out, perhaps I picked a good time to go.’
‘Oh? Why? Have they got something on you?’
Lawrence felt that the least repayment he could make for his host’s kindness was to give him a full explanation; besides which, it provided him with the chance to put forward further illustrations of his theory to one who was, he somehow suspected, a receptive listener. So he began:
‘Well, put it this way, Paul: I have certain proclivities. When I mentioned my lover, for instance, who used to work in a newsagent’s, I could have been more specific: it was a man.’
Paul raised neither of his eyebrows at this disclosure, but merely said, ‘Oh?’
‘Now these proclivities have, recently, led me into what can only be described as bad habits. It has become one of the pleasures of my life to go into toilets, public toilets, men’s toilets, and to leave messages, and to receive messages. Messages which sometimes lead to assignations. Assignations which are sometimes of a rather physical nature.’
‘Well, you’re doing nothing illegal there, so far as I know.’
‘There is a problem, though, you see. My twenty-first birthday is not until later this year.’
‘I see. So you are in technical breach of our country’s somewhat unenlightened legislation in this area.’
‘Quite. Now this has never presented problems before, but just this week something happened. An incid
ent. I have to admit that I found it rather disturbing. I was in town, doing a bit of shopping, and I thought I’d pop into one of my regular haunts and see if there was any action going on. Turned out to be very disappointing, actually, so I ended up having to write something myself. And when I came out of the cubicle, there was this policeman standing at the sink, washing his hands, and staring at me in the mirror. He watched me very closely as I left, really studying my face, and then he followed me out. I began to walk faster and headed for one of the shopping streets where there would be more people. Just before I got out of earshot he shouted, “Excuse me, son,” and then I broke into a run and dashed into a branch of John Menzies. I must have shaken him off because that was the last I saw of him.’
Lawrence had told his anecdote truthfully, but he was, I’m afraid, unaware of certain details which might have put a different interpretation on it. How was he to know that the policeman in question had been anxious to get a message that afternoon to his greengrocer, telling him that he would be unable to make their usual Thursday darts match, owing to an unexpected shift in the week’s duty rota? And that he, Lawrence, bore more than a passing resemblance to this greengrocer’s son, whom the policeman had met only once, briefly, in the half-light of the lounge bar of The Hare and Hounds? So that this whole incident derived from a simple misapprehension, and Lawrence had not, as it happened, been the subject of any suspicion at all.
‘I can see why this might have unsettled you,’ said Paul. ‘But it’s scarcely a reason for turning fugitive, is it?
‘That was two days ago,’ said Lawrence. ‘Something happened yesterday which was even worse. I got back to my room on campus and went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. Then my next-door neighbour comes in and tells me that a policeman has been round asking for me. Asking for me by name. He hadn’t said what for, but I think I can guess.’
Once again, however, Lawrence had jumped to a too hasty conclusion, for yesterday’s visitor had not been a policeman at all, but a third-year biology student, Kevin Cronin, dressed up as a policeman for the purposes of a Drama Society production of Joe Orton’s Loot, which was in its last day of rehearsal. Now the part of the policeman in Loot, as the drama students among you will know, is very small, and Kevin had taken advantage of one of his long absences from the stage in order to visit Lawrence, for the perfectly innocent reason that, being a keen amateur photographer, he wanted to borrow the key to the students’ dark-room, which Lawrence, who was secretary of the Camera Club, kept in his possession.
‘So there you are,’ said Lawrence. ‘Perhaps nothing will come of all this, but it alarms me to hear that this Amanda woman, whoever she is, knows something about it and has been in touch with the police. Perhaps it was her who tipped them off. Perhaps she’s conducting some kind of personal crusade against people like me.’
‘You have my sympathy,’ said Paul. ‘We live in a society where even liberal values, hardly the most challenging in the world, are being gradually stifled. However, if I were to make a small observation, it would be that you have invalidated your own theory. It seems to me that you are being persecuted, wrongly, for your sexuality. Now, surely, this is not a question of luck. How are these things determined? Genetically, mainly. And there’s also an element of personal choice involved.’
‘One’s sexuality,’ said Lawrence, smiling, ‘does indeed exert a massive influence over one’s actions. This is as true of the young woman who finds herself pregnant and has to marry, as it is of the Cabinet minister who channels his sadomasochistic impulses into the making of government policy. But I must say that in my own case I had very little choice in the matter. I attribute my homosexuality to the fact that Chelsea were relegated during the season of 1978–9.’
Paul laughed and said, ‘That I cannot believe. But I’m sure you intend to explain.’
‘Of course,’ said Lawrence. ‘Puberty, you see, is the crucial period. Many young men have homosexual fantasies and even experiences at this point, especially if they are at a single-sex school; which, incidentally, I was not. Anyway, it was at this sensitive stage that I received my first and only love letter. It was deposited anonymously in this bag which I used to carry my books in. I was very excited and spent some days wondering which of the girls in my class could have sent it. Then one lunchtime I went to a talk given by one of the chaps in the sixth form about this trip he’d made to Africa in the holidays, and when he started writing on the blackboard I was amazed to see it was the same handwriting. The note was from him! I was taken aback at first but then when I thought about all the things he’d said about me in the letter I was still quite flattered. I developed an enormous crush on him and eventually I plucked up the nerve to talk to him about it.’
‘And?’
‘Well, you see, it turned out that the note wasn’t intended for me at all. It was meant for my sister, who was at the same school, only three years above me. She had this very distinctive Chelsea supporter’s bag but, like many people who aren’t really that interested in football, her allegiance was rather fickle, and when they went down to the second division that season she started supporting Liverpool instead, because they were league champions. Naturally she didn’t want the bag any more, so she gave it to me. The next day this unfortunate chap had slipped his love letter into it. I ended up fancying the pants off him for about two terms, and finally had my first sexual encounter with a friend of his in the shower after a cross-country run. And I’ve never looked back since.’ Lawrence smiled again and drank up the last of the tea, including a few leaves. Then he assumed a more worried look. ‘This girl Amanda – you didn’t tell her where I was, did you?’
‘Of course not,’ said Paul, and added, casually, ‘You’ll stay for some lunch, I hope?’
‘That would be very pleasant,’ said Lawrence. ‘And then I really must be getting to Derby.’
‘I’ll just go out to the shop,’ said Paul, ‘and get a few things.’
He was lying, of course, but he had a good reason: for Amanda had convinced him, over the telephone, that Lawrence had suicidal tendencies, and he had promised to keep him in the house until she arrived.
And now, I suppose, you will be wanting me to explain how she had come to hold this belief.
The truth is that Lawrence’s sister, who was a highminded sort of woman, worked for the Samaritans; and Lawrence, having failed to obtain any answer from her home telephone number, had called her at work. Amanda had been trailing after him all day as usual, and she was hanging around within earshot of the telephone booth when he spoke the words, ‘Hello, is that the Samaritans?’: from this, coupled with his troubled demeanour, combined with his rapid flight from campus, she drew an erroneous, though understandable, conclusion.
Lawrence, meanwhile, had dashed back to his room, looking out for policemen on the way, and had thrown some clothes into a bag, pausing only to ask a neighbour if she had any travel-sickness pills he might use (he was prone to travel sickness). No, she had said, but Timothy’s room is open, and he has some: he keeps them on top of his bookcase. Now this would have been true, three days before; but since then Timothy had split up with his girlfriend. This had induced a fit of depression which he had attempted to counter, one morning, by rearranging the furniture in his room, a process which involved, among other things, moving his travel-sickness pills to the drawer of his desk, and moving his sleeping pills to the top of his bookcase. Lawrence had swallowed at least four of these before his train arrived at Derby (puzzled at the time, as to why they appeared to be doing nothing for his travel sickness), so it is no wonder that he was still half asleep when Paul and his colleagues met him at Sheffield station.
An hour or so later Paul and Lawrence were sitting down to a fine lunch of toast and cheese when there was a knock at the front door. Paul went to answer it: Lawrence followed him and lingered in the hallway. The callers were two policemen and a woman whom he immediately guessed to be Amanda.
‘Is he here?’ one of
the policemen asked.
‘Yes,’ said Paul.
‘Good work. Now let’s have a word with him.’
Lawrence turned and fled up the stairs. The policemen started to clatter after him but Paul told them, ‘It’s all right, he can’t get out that way’, and they came back down.
‘You fool, that’s not what we should be worried about,’ said Amanda. ‘What about the upstairs windows? Let me go up and talk to him.’
She climbed two flights of stairs and found Lawrence in the topmost room of the house, in the process of opening the window and scrambling out onto the window ledge.
‘Come any nearer,’ he said, ‘and I’ll jump. I mean it.’
He was telling the truth, for, if we might undertake a bit of psychology at this point (it hasn’t been the strong point of this story so far, I admit), Lawrence genuinely did not consider his life to be of any value, not even to himself; and if the chain of circumstances which we have been following had obliged him to perform a premature and involuntary suicide, that would have been fine by him. As he stood on that window ledge, poised between Amanda in the bedroom behind him, and Paul and two watchful policemen in the garden beneath, he was half inclined to jump. He could easily have jumped.
What, then, prevented him? Well, he was prevented, as it happened, by the bursting of a water-pipe the previous evening in a house four miles away on the other side of Sheffield. The explanation, had Lawrence ever heard it, would doubtless have pleased him. The house in question was the property of one Norman Lunt, who made his living by teaching maths at the secondary school which stood in the street just opposite the front garden of Paul’s home. As a consequence of having had to spend the whole evening mopping up water from his kitchen floor, Mr Lunt was now behind with his marking, and had no less than thirty-four sets of homework to get through during his lunch hour. Finding himself distracted from this task by an extremely noisy and foul-mouthed game of football which was taking place in the playground just outside the staffroom window, he had told the players, in no uncertain terms, to go away and continue their game elsewhere. Thus it was that these six children went to finish off the match at the very edge of the playground, near the road, where they never normally would have thought of playing; so that when one of their number, a promising young inside-right called Peter, took a flying shot at goal from well within his opponents’ half (which means that he would probably in any case have been offside), the ball soared straight over the fence, gathering speed and height, and hit Lawrence in the pit of the stomach just as he was about to jump. He was sent reeling backwards and had crashed down onto the bed before he even knew what was happening.
